29 October 2016

For the first time in nearly two years, I find myself back at the computer, with time to reflect on where life has taken me and my family. And what a difference a year makes….

Our six and a half year adventure in India is over. Smoked out by the epic and dangerous levels of Delhi pollution… battered by the costs of living in a city with no infrastructure, where you paid top rupee for clean air, water, back up power, road safety and schools… we reluctantly decided to move back to the UK. It was not an easy decision. Each one of us loves India… each one of us had deep friendships we didn't want to disrupt… and yet, day after day, the physical cost of breathing dirty air… and having nowhere to run, play or exercise were becoming too damaging. My husband and I found our physical health deteriorating… and as a family, we were too often trying to subsist inside our brutalist concrete flat, rather than enjoying the simple daily pleasure of a walk or a play in the park.

It seems many of our friends had the same issues… I can think of only four families we 'grew up' with in Delhi who are still there, by choice or the lack of it… And the guilt of having that choice is something we grapple with everyday. Hundreds of millions of people in India's major cities have no other option.

So here we are now in Bath, an ancient Roman city west of London. The children walk to their free public school. We bicycle. We do our chores ourselves, which is actually a blessing, despite what many people feel (try being a madam for a few years and tell me if your joints don't deteriorate from the sheer inactivity)… And while we all miss India and our friends desperately, we know that we are lucky in the extreme to be able to live here and visit anytime.

12 August 2015

Judging from my serious lack of posts this year, you'd be right to assume that work has taken over my waking hours. In the past year, I've helped cover the Indian elections for the Guardian, presented endless episodes of BBC's World Have Your Say from India and London, and spent weeks covering the heart-rending devastation of the Nepal earthquake for BBC World Service Radio.

So how does it feel to be living my dream: mother of two beautiful kids, work as an international news reporter/presenter, a husband who writes novels, endless adventures in one of the world's most beautiful, interesting and vexing places? Foof, well that's the first problem right there... I seldom sum up my own life that way. And I'm sure we all suffer from such myopia, especially parents of young children with the added challenge of working entirely for ourselves.

01 October 2014

My parents voted for Barack Obama, presumably because like so many immigrants in America, they see the Democrats as more inclusive than the Christian-right-dominated, overwhelmingly white Republican Party.

Yet, as nostalgic and devout Hindus who left for the US forty years ago, my parents are also huge supporters of India’s new prime minister Narendra Modi, a Hindu-nationalist whose epic efficiency was suddenly and notably absent when it came to mobs butchering more than a thousand Muslims in his home state of Gujarat in 2002.

He was banned from visiting the US for a decade due to the horrific religious violence unleashed under his watch.

I was a cub BBC reporter at the time and door-stepped Mr. Modi in Ahmedabad as he gathered with other senior BJP leaders to discuss matters.

I’d just interviewed a Muslim man who’d been set on fire by a mob. He lay in a simple concrete hut covered in second degree burns in soaring temperatures, clearly suffering, but too afraid to get to a hospital.

Pregnant women had been disembowelled that fortnight. A senior Muslim Congress leader had been torn to pieces in public, his multiple calls to the police and authorities mysteriously ignored.

I showed Mr. Modi the photo of the burnt man on my boxy digital camera – his skin had become a tight pink mask devoid of hair – and asked the then chief minister what he would say to him.

Mr. Modi showed no emotion or concern. He simply stated that medical care was being provided, a fact not evident in the make-shift shelters for those who’d been violently hounded from their homes.

The site of the same Mr. Modi this week in Madison Square Garden was quite a contrast from those ugly post-riot days. He was quite the charmer, championing everyone and everything from toilets, to trade to Hugh Jackman (?!?)

For me, the sight of adulating Indian-American audiences was far more surprising and disappointing than seeing Mr. Modi basking in his newfound global limelight.

It’s not that I don’t want him to succeed in remaking India. Anyone who can transform this country of 1.2 billion people into a cleaner, more educated, less corrupt and more equitable place obviously deserves support.

But the unquestioning – and in some cases – naked religious and ethnic loyalty shown by Indians in the US is, at best, rank hypocrisy.

How can anyone support the politics of inclusion in the US, while excusing and even embracing a party and a leader whose power has been built on exclusion and violence in India? How many Modi-maniacs also supported the BJP's efforts to send bricks with the name of the Hindu-god Ram on them to Ayodhya to build a temple on the ruins of a demolished mosque?

And before you excuse the BJP by pointing to the sins of the opposition Congress party, itself adept at corruption, violence and division, let me just say that I’d be writing a not dissimilar post if the same display of pseudo-patriotism had been trotted out for a Congress leader.

My point is that Indian Americans ought to look beyond the fig-leaf of their own economic and academic achievements, beyond language, religious and caste loyalties to ask how much Mr. Modi mirrors their own prejudices and moral short-comings?

Frankly, I think the adoration of Mr. Modi by NRIs comes from the fact that he so perfectly mirrors their duplicity. In public, he preaches accountability and inclusiveness while privately condoning the re-writing of textbooks to reflect a Hindu hegemony on history. He champions social media as a sign of his own engagement, but is mysteriously silent on current instances of communal violence and the imprisonment of those who criticize him.

He is, in short, so familiar to NRIs, who have thrived in America precisely because of equal rights and a certain blindness to ethnicity and religion... a situation which ironically gives them the right to practice an absentee fascism when it comes to their home country.

My fellow Indian Americans, if you really do want Mr. Modi (in spite of his dubious past) to succeed in transforming India to something more than a global snake charmer, the land of color and stink, then you’ll have to look into the darkest recesses of your own caste loyalties and religious divisions.

Stop sending your kids to garba and bhangra nights and instead learn to discuss with them Ambedkar, Arya Samaj and the guy who killed Mahatma Gandhi. Take a class in Urdu poetry... and read about Partition. Maybe take in a UNDP report or two on toilets and caste.

That’s India too.

Like every other tribe or nation on earth which aspires to greatness, you’ll have to hold not only your self-appointed economic and cultural messiah, Mr. Modi, to account. You’ll have to hold your own beliefs to account and decide if you really do stand for transformation.

I know it was really cool to see a Desi in Madison Square Garden, the UN and the White House, but more than waving the tricolor, cheering floodlit Hollywood stars, or even applauding joint op-eds in the Washington Post, the thing that might really begin to transform India is a willingness to embrace reality.

07 May 2014

Before the scorching summer sun consumes us entirely, I wanted to dwell on the delights of the last few temperate weeks of Indian weather. In our local Delhi parks, it's been raining sweet purple and pale white mulberries and loganberries. People have been shaking trees and catching these divine fruits on sheets spread beneath, walking away with kilos of sweetness.

I also discovered these delightfully unique and beautiful squiggly seed pods (pictured above). Try googling 'squiggly seed pods' and you'll appreciate how hard it was to track down their name and source! But I got there in the end: acacia nilotica or Indian gum arabic tree. It looks like a mimosa with feathery fronds and pom pom yellow flowers and its pods are poisonous in large quantities (usually only to goats thankfully!), causing Methemoglobinemia, or shortness of breath and blue skin.

Tomatoes have done well in cocopeat

Cocopeat, which I thought was the answer to our prayers of hauling heavy bags of dirt up four flights to our roof, has been a huge disappointment. Even mixed 50-50 with vermicompost, it's yielded stunted plants. The cocopeat is dangerous because if it dries out, it's notoriously difficult to soak through again. I discovered that the soil was wet at the top, but dry as a bone at the roots.

Still, the tomatoes seem to have loved it, proliferating into multitudes of small and oblong fruits for weeks on end. There's not much taste to them though, which you'd expect in sterile soil that has all the substance of polyester fibre!

My answer will be to mix the cocopeat with huge quantities of homemade compost which is now happily rotting away again in Delhi's May heat, after having stalled in the dry coolness of winter.

If you're still lucky enough to have access to Mulberries, here are some fabulous recipes by Delhi's Pamela Timms:

03 March 2014

If only the kids could be put to work!! Sadly no. They can usually be found mucking about at my desk, either toying with my expensive broadcasting equipment, pilfering stationery or trying to mouse-click their way to their favourite Cbeebies TV show.

But frankly, I wouldn't have it any other way. After several years working part-time, secretly enjoying it, but also in constant anxiety over the remnants of my career... I'm finally back to full time journalism. I tried (and failed thankfully) to get a 'swallow-you-up' job that would have flung me from story to story with little hope of seeing my children (not that part of me wouldn't have relished the relative peace and quiet of news!) Instead, I'm working from home, picking and choosing between lots of superb assignments. Even on the busiest, most demanding days professionally, I'm able to spend a few minutes with the kids at lunchtime or bedtime.

It may not last, but for me, this is the perfect work-life balance.

By August, both children will be in school (the little one only half-days). A small part of me dreads the fact that their infancy is over. But truth be told, most of me is just joyful. I'm free of the gruelling baby dependency, but not of the sweet attachment and innocent neediness.

So while this blog has mostly been about children and monsoon gardens, occasionally interrupted by something resembling news... I now hope it will morph into what I'd always intended it to be before life took a perfectly lovely left turn: a consistent blog on modern India, occasionally interrupted by some lovely gardening or parental wisdom (ha!)

02 January 2014

My New Year has begun in a new flat - one that is considerably free of electrical fires and deranged landlords! And with Delhi's blissful winter days upon us, I've been itching to grow stuff.

My question was, where? Our only available space is the lovely, spare little rooftop above our flat. Most residential buildings in Indian cities have them. And if you're lucky like us, it's yours alone!

But how do you build beds that will be watertight enough to keep wet earth from seeping through the roof, while still allowing drainage?

How do you build something affordable? How do you transport bags of heavy soil four floors up? And once up there, how will you feed and water it all?

27 September 2013

After my Indian wedding, once the elephant-led procession was over, and the vows completed around the sacred fire on a chilly December night in the desert... my new husband and I finally escaped into the hush of our room in a traditional Rajasthani haveli. Like any newlywed couple, having survived months of wedding planning, as well as an onslaught of family and friends from around the globe, we snuggled up and naturally.... we slept!

But for a few moments, as I lay on the carved wooden bedstead, enveloped in curtains of Arabian jasmine, each waxy, white, cup shaped flower perfuming the air with a honey-musk scent, I-WAS-IN-HEAVEN!

Of course this was the scene I'd always pictured (my daydreams involved a loving duet sung whilst gazing fervently into the eyes of my beloved... even though neither my husband nor I can sing a note in tune!) But apart from my Bollywood-fuelled expectations, the enchantment lay in the opulence of these exquisite flowers, laid on in such quantity for me and my husband, just this once in our lives.

So you can understand my delight today, after three years of trying to grow my own, I spotted this. A perfect, crinolined white bud! Arabian jasmine (Jasminum sambac) (Mogra or motiya in Hindi) is actually native to the humid climates of South and Southeast Asia. The wildly fragrant flowers, not surprisingly, are used to make perfume.

Here in India, the buds are harvested in early morning, strung into necklaces and then sold for ten rupees ($.15) each.

Here's my favorite Mogra lady, always at the same traffic light, always ready with a smile and lovely, fragrant flowers to end a long, dusty day.

So what's the secret to growing this amazing jasmine? Well, a tropical climate helps. Apart from that, watering is key. Only water the plant if a finger dipped into the soil reveals dryness. Otherwise, you'll overwater and the buds will drop. The plant needs light but not direct sun or the leaves will burn.

Keep old wood cut back as Arabian Jasmine only flowers on new wood, and apply lots of homemade compost! (Mine has transformed my potted terrace garden!)

I won't be stringing whole garlands anytime soon, but at least now I can enjoy the scent of perfumed nights long after the honeymoon ended!

10 July 2013

A pair of used, heavy-duty gardening gloves and three terracotta composters... apart from the Monsoon, which has kicked off here in Delhi with a deluge that flooded our office and soaked our tribal kilim rugs... I've come home from a month's holiday to gifts only a gardener could love.

These wonderful, stacking compost bins - complete with muck! - came courtesy a departing friend. She and her husband couldn't quite believe I wanted, of all things, their compost!! But having discovered the satisfaction of producing black gold, I got greedy.

The cast-off gloves were most generously provided by a friend in England who makes me green with envy with her incredible kitchen garden, complete with ripening strawberries under a diy cage; prolific asparagus bed, orchard and copious cottage flowers including some exquisite miniature roses!

Together, the gloves and the muck have helped my little tropical terrace garden thrive. No longer are the sad plants clinging on against pests and roaring sun.

Now they are lush in leaf, dark in soil, not a pest to be seen, everything in the pink (or green) of health! And just look at that rich, black earth! That's the end result of kilos of vegetable peelings, shredded paper (a brilliant idea!), mango pits, and cardboard all chewed to bits by wormy things whilst baking in the Indian sun, watered by the monsoon, and lovingly turned over now and again.

It
was overcast when I went up to the roof to turn the compost. But with
temperatures of 100F, by the end, I emerged as if from a Swedish sauna,
covered from my scalp downwards in sweat. Oh the things we do
for compost!

The composters are available here.
The gloves? Sadly, there isn't much of a market in India for gardeners,
so any comfy tools or accoutrements have to be bought elsewhere.

06 May 2013

If I had to analyze why -- despite its ancient culture, knowledge, enterprise and natural resources -- India remains home to more poverty and deprivation than sub-saharan Africa... here's what I'd say:

Infrastructure.

Ugh. What a boring word. Conjures up ads for cement (they're EVERYWHERE in India); utilitarian bridges, dams and sewer lines; industrial bits that do the unseen work in cities, keeping nasty things flowing away, and clean things in abundance. How many journalists are clamoring to write about the preponderance of underground piping or trash collection mechanisms, when there are far sexier things to reveal: starving kids, colorful eunuchs, epic graft and Bollywood!

But the recent US presidential election briefly put a spotlight on infrastructure as a moral issue. If you build it, everyone benefits. Paradoxically, I think it's the issue of equality which ensures that infrastructure remains a luxury in India, despite more than a decade of promises.

See, everyone in India doesn't 'need' infrastructure. The poor and ignorant were born that way and are destined to die that way and no one should really bother, because it's their own karma. Even if you improve their lives, 'it won't do them any good.'

The worthy folk (upper castes, middle classes, power-hungry politicos, old money, foreigners, etc) can just buy their own personal infrastructure. Need clean water? Install a state-of-the-art reverse osmosis filter in your kitchen. But really, why bother with a functional kitchen at all? It's only the silly maid who'll be using it. Drains blocked? Hire some wretch to clean your shit out by hand from under the manhole in the street.

Want to educate your kids? Pay a private school a suitcase full of cash to reform your runts. Roads? Who cares if they function, it's only the silly driver who will negotiate the potholes, pedestrians and traffic chaos.

India's elite have become all too accustomed to their own cheap personal infrastructure. Servants, they're called, and they are the wretches doomed to plug the comfort gaps for their masters.

'Oh but otherwise they wouldn't have a job!' say the employers, convinced of their realpolitik.

And so the merry-go-round of misery swirls on. There's little sign of improvement, so even the poor convince themselves that a kick in the teeth and a penny or two is progress.

Yet there's simply no escaping that this mentality keeps India in a hopeless, lose-lose situation.

If you've ever been to Delhi or Mumbai, I'm sure you've noticed how pristine BMW's and Lexus cars drive down streets that look like film sets for civil-war Beirut. Like the photo above (taken just outside my very posh Delhi neighborhood, home to armies of powerful journalists, politicians and administrators), India is a hodge-podge of modern muck, broken streets, ill-equipped public institutions, smelly toilets, wonky buildings; all liberally peppered with idiotically expensive homes and cars. Never mind the everyday, unspeakable police brutality, the numbers of anonymous, homeless dead, nor the millions of children enslaved in beggary or sweatshops.

Still, half the time, you can just about blur out the lack of infrastructure. So it's stupidly hot, there are no trees, and no building codes requiring insulation? Just fire up the air conditioners!

Water ran out? Ahhh, just jump start the pump and suck more out of the ground. Power failure? No worries, the Krypton-sized back-up battery pack will kick in!

Internet signal as fast and constant as a snail's trail? Hmmm, actually, there's not much you can do about that. Neither can you do much to prevent your kid ending up crammed in with 39 others, even in your posh private school. And worse, you can't anticipate when one of you will come home burning with mosquito-borne dengue fever, or brain worms because the city is literally awash with raw sewage.

The ultimate karmic punch of course is when your fancy car gets smashed to pieces in lawless traffic... and even if the city has an ambulance, it will never reach you in time because of poor roads, girdlock and often, simply because people will stubbornly remain in their spots, refusing to give way. 'Hey, everyone here's got problems!'

I don't believe these failings have anything to do with culture. Indian culture is filled with altruistic, progressive ideas and India is filled with lower, middle and upper class people desperately trying to improve the status quo. Take an Indian out of India, and most likely, he or she will thrive.

They do have everything to do with a total lack of law enforcement and the fact that an incredibly well entrenched group of morally bankrupt, cowardly, intellectually adolescent men and women run this country's Parliament, legislative assemblies and administration.

Until India strips bare the fantasy that a few grand malls, a few mega-movie stars and a few rich billionaires make for a successful nation, even a world power; until people confront the stinking, ghastly mess outside the few gated communities; and until the powerful make a united moral call to invest in clinics, doctors, schools, teachers, clean water, toilets, nutrition and education, India will remain a disappointment to itself and to the world; a stunted, incapable nation where enterprise is smothered at birth.

Recently, listeners challenged the BBC World Service on its coverage of the Boston marathon bombings. Why, they asked, did the deaths of three people deserve so many hours of coverage, when scores of people die everyday in other parts of the world, unmentioned.

I can't speak for BBC editors - indeed I'm a long way away from those decision makers. But as someone who has spent many years covering international news stories day to day, I can't deny the fundamental fact that some countries value their citizens' lives more than others. And to an extent, the rest of world including the news media, can only follow suit in reflecting that.

If charity begins at home, so too does respect... It's rather obvious that if the United States is willing to invest millions of dollars in safeguarding lives... when the city of Boston can shut down and deploy every last law enforcement officer to hunt for the killers of a child, an immigrant and a woman... then the world is obviously going to take notice too.

Conversely, when you can't be bothered to protect innocent infants from drinking shitty water; when you don't care if people die in agony of treatable diseases; when you're quite happy to cheat others to make sure you pocket a few extra bucks; when you think a few cell phones will reduce poverty, rather than the availability of a good solid meal, a solid home, and schools for children ... well then, the world will reflect that contempt.

12 April 2013

(The link expires after a week, so apologies if you click after that.)

There's only one book I've read that has helped me understand what's happening inside North Korea, and I highly recommend it. Personal and gripping, Nothing to Envy follows the lives of six North Korean citizens over fifteen years—a
chaotic period that saw the death of Kim Il-sung, the rise to power of
his son Kim Jong-il, and a devastating famine that killed one-fifth of
the population. Demick brings to life what it means to be living under
the most repressive totalitarian regime today—an Orwellian world that is
by choice not connected to the Internet, where displays of affection
are punished, informants are rewarded, and an offhand remark can send a
person to the gulag for life. Demick takes us deep inside the country,
beyond the reach of government censors, and through meticulous and
sensitive reporting we see her subjects fall in love, raise families,
nurture ambitions, and struggle for survival. One by one, we witness
their profound, life-altering disillusionment with the government and
their realization that, rather than providing them with lives of
abundance, their country has betrayed them.

10 April 2013

Did I say SLOW boil?? In two days, the temperature has become as hot as my first red chilli! Even though I'm resisting using the air conditioners, it won't be long before I give in. It's already so toasty, the water in the taps comes out hot! I'm writing this from my rooftop office which, even with all the doors open, is the consistency of a sauna.

So in my quest to take back the terrace garden... I've just expanded my organic pest control arsenal and wanted to share tips with any of you losing the war against mealy bugs and the like.

All three tips require almost no effort, little cash and are super effective if you're an organic gardener like me (or more accurately, striving to be one!)

09 April 2013

Long before becoming a mother herself, filmmaker and author Saira Shah was deeply attuned to children. As a war
correspondent, her unsentimental but searing films, Death in Gaza and Beneath the Veil, showed the effects of children living in extreme
conflicts.

The misplaced bravado of Palestinian boys brainwashed by
ideas of matyrdom and the haunting fear in the green eyes of young girls in a
distant Afghan valley brought home the tragedy of their circumstances.

Saira's delicate telling of their stories remains vivid.

Her first novel, The Mouseproof Kitchen, blends the real life story of her own daughter, born profoundly disabled, and the story of a fictional Type A couple, Anna and Tobias, coming to terms with a life they never bargained for.

Synopsis

Anna
is a planner. So when she discovers she’s pregnant, she prepares for a
perfect new life in Provence, France, with her perfect new
baby-to-be. Anna’s partner, the easy-going Tobias, shouldn’t have too
much difficulty tagging along;after all, he’s a musician who
rarely starts his day before noon. But all that changes when their baby
is born severely disabled.

Anna, Tobias, and their
daughter, Freya, end up in a rickety, rodent-infested farmhouse in a
remote town in France; far from the mansion in
Provence they had imagined. Little do they know that this is
the beginning of what will become an incredible journey of the
heart; one during which they learn there really is no such
thing as a mouse-proof kitchen. Life is messy, and it’s the messy bits
that make it count.

Review

I couldn't leave this book in the next room, much less stop reading it. The first chapter describes the birth of Freya, elfin, beautiful. As Anna experiences the pain and then the intense joy of meeting her new baby, reality begins to intrude on her perfect moment. Like so many mothers, Anna's new baby is the culmination of years of longing, meticulous planning that inevitably ends in failure month after wretched month... and then, finally, a longed-for conception. Freya is the collision of dreams and needs... her coming gives Anna the illusion of a perfect beginning to a perfect new life.

08 April 2013

While
the rest of the world is slowly emerging from toe-numbing temperatures, we’re
already breaking into a sweat here in India, usually by 9 a.m! Spring in Delhi
is on the slow boil to summer, with the last displays of hollyhocks and
dahlias before the sun begins to scorch. In a few short weeks, mornings marked by cool breezes under the swoosh
of the ceiling fan will be replaced by the drone air-conditioners in
sealed, concrete rooms.

Two
years on, I’m still finding it difficult to adjust my gardening bio-rhythms to
India. In London, it’s only in March that I even begin to think about planting,
pruning, mulching... Yet in Delhi, March heralds the abrupt end of a short, lovely growing
season which packs in salad leaves, herbs, tender blossoms and an early sowing
of summer okra, eggplant and chillies.

Return of the Pests

I’m still deeply envious of anyone with even a postage stamp size of earth here in this mega-city of 15 million.
Oh to be able to break out the fork and create beds, sow carrots and spinach in open ground!! Our first and second floor flat has generous terraces... but in the extremes of
tropical weather, container planting becomes even more challenging. Last year,
most of my new plants were attacked and nearly wiped out by mealy bug – a
cottony, impervious white sap sucker that is impossible to control.

24 January 2013

Outside my window, the sun is shining brightly above tall peepal trees – their heart-shaped leaves rustling in the breeze. The air is cool, blowing down from the snowy Himalayan peaks further north and bringing respite after months of roaring heat.

In the park opposite, ladies of a certain age are taking their morning walk. They follow the rectangular path, chatting animatedly, wearing elegant Indian kaftans over practical trainers. And to ward against the morning chill, inevitably, their shoulders are draped with lovely shawls.

This morning, one of them is wearing a particularly fetching piece... russet flowers embroidered on white wool... punctuated by ochre arches along the border. Judging by the evenness of the embroidery, however, this shawl is probably machine made... and represents another nail in the coffin of an art dating back more than 600 years.

Like so many ancient crafts in India, hand-woven Kashmiri shawls – or 'Pashminas' as they’ve become known the world over – are disappearing. Once, they graced the shoulders of emperors, princes and noblemen and were the rage of European nobility... or were lovingly collected for wedding trousseaus... today, they are being replaced slowly and inevitably by mass-produced shawls in synthetic materials.

So when I heard about Aditi Desai... a woman who has been collecting, restoring and studying hand-made shawls for 30 years, I arranged to meet her, hoping to finally understand what a ‘pashmina’ really is. We arranged to meet at a gallery where she was exhibiting some of her private collection. Before leaving home, I grabbed a few of my own so-called ‘pashminas’ to show her. I was curious... was anything I owned hand-made or even worthy of the term ‘pashmina’?

On the short auto rickshaw ride over, I thought of the shawls of my own youth. My mother owned some jamawars – a term whose definition escaped me. As a child, I’d often watch her dress up in rich silk saris, hand-crafted gold jewelery encrusted with emeralds and rubies, and her shawls. But even as I played with her exquisite things, I understood little of their history or craftsmanship.

I arrived at the gallery to find a queue of people, like me, all clutching shawls – some family heirlooms which had been mouldering unloved in closets for decades.

I first moved to Delhi back in 1996. It was August... muggy... the middle of the monsoon and I'll never forget my first sight of it. If you've read Alexander Frater's Chasing the Monsoon, you know it is an event nearly half the planet waits for, relies on, dreads...

Monsoon rain isn't a gentle downpour.... it isn't England's infamous 'spitting' mist. Nor is it America's dramatic thunderstorm with its drum kit of thunder and lightning.

The monsoon is one of nature's most enigmatic and sweeping events.

Each day nearly on the dot of 3 p.m., just as all of us hapless, severely underpaid Delhi journos felt our spirits and energy flagging... the first dollops -- large enough to rival frogs -- began to land. Within seconds, with little warning... sheets of water would descend. Anyone unlucky enough to be caught short of an awning was instantly soaked. For an hour, perhaps two, a staggering volume of rain would fall. There was no wind, no thunder or lightning... no drama. Just the utilitarian pouring of water from cloud, each drop hard enough to thump your scalp.

Today, the monsoon barely registers in this water-parched city of 16 million souls. India's hyper-polluted, eco-phobic lifestyle is helping ensure not only that the air and water are soaked with toxins, but that when something clean does come along, it's sure to be wasted.

A great proportion of rain water washes over this concreted city and either floods roads - which still seem to have no drainage well into the new millennium - or runs off into sewers to mix with the horrific sludge killing the Yamuna river.

In mid-September, just at the very tail end of the monsoon, I managed to rig up my own rainwater harvesting system with the help of our trusty plumber, Das.

Das, like the few effective plumbers in this city, is from the south-eastern state of Orissa, which, mysteriously, is the only place to turn out proper plumbers.

A few wooden pallets, a large plastic storage tank and some piping... and the stream of rain water that routinely runs off our roof, wasted, is now being harvested for thirsty plants. It's a 'drop in the ocean' though, given that our building's current water system is so criminally wasteful. Everyday, a pump is switched on that manually draws water up to the storage tanks on the roof. There's no sensor to tell you when the tanks are full though (there could be, if the landlord was willing to spend a few pennies), so every blessed day, I watch in fury as surplus city water pours from the overflow pipe into the street below.

I've covered communities in India where people are drinking putrid water without filtering or boiling (they can't afford the wood)... where people are killed in the brutal competition for water... where women walk for miles to drying wells for a few drops. And here we are pouring it off the side of our roof for the sake of a $150 sensor.

02 September 2012

It's monsoon season here in Delhi and while normal life comes to a grudging halt as torrential downpours flood roads, send sewers overflowing, grind traffic to a halt and make normal life a misery ... it's a great time for gardening!!

If you're reading this in Europe or the US, then your growing season is heading for cold storage. But here in India, it's just beginning. All summer, both plants and humans have been in survival mode, trying to stay hydrated in the 120℉ heat.

But for the past few weeks, the abundance of monsoon rain has meant new plants have a fighting chance and seedlings can grow! Having said that, in the course of one month, my plants have gone from scorched to positively sodden. Apart from replanting with loads of grit or sand, all I can do now is tip the water out, lest the roots suffocate.

Makes you realize why grey England is such a gardening Mecca. While the drizzly, middling weather may not be so cheery for humans, it's a blessing for so many different plants, which thrive in the lack of extreme temperatures. Here in India, each short, intense season brings its own challenges. In summer, most of my plants burned. A few ficus trees bit the dust while palms and bamboos needed a serious haircut to remove singed leaves. I had to water twice a day to keep most things standing. My single rose has been cut back so many times, I've only recently seen its leaves, never mind flowers!

But now, in the glorious, thunderous monsoon, it's time to give everything a go! Here you can see aubergine seedlings getting a good start in a coco-peat grow bag bought at my local nursery. I've also got chillies on the go, as well as lemongrass, lemons, tomatoes and an errant neem seedling! I'm told ingesting a single leaf of this miraculous plant will heal just about any stomach upset. And of course neem is a terrific pest deterrent. No wonder so many foreign pharmaceutical firms have been out to patent neem extracts.

With so much rain falling (and mostly washing away in a city that sees chronic water shortages in summer), I've also had in mind to recreate my London rainwater harvesting set-up here. It's very simple... a flexible tube attached to a downward gutter pipe channels water into a big covered plastic tub with a spigot at the bottom. I use two in London to water different parts of the garden. Rainwater is of course more acidic and therefore nicer for plants, especially evergreens. So far, I've located a suitable storage tub. Just trying to get the right plumbing bits to harness the rain water cascading off our roof!! Stay tuned for more.

Meanwhile, my composting experiment is still proving patchy. I've got a three-tier terracotta composting system from the Daily Dump. It fills up fast and rots fast too, but beyond the initial phase of breaking down, I'm finding it difficult to produce a uniform, workable compost. It's often too wet because too much green stuff gets chucked in. And when I add brown stuff (paper, cardboard), it gets too dry and doesn't break down any further. It doesn't help that no one in my household sees the point of composting in a country where household rubbish is immediately separated by hand anyway. Space is also an issue. We are composting on small terraces, so managing our rubbish, mixing it, letting the liquid drain and then sifting it, becomes a very messy job that no one apart from me is prepared to do.

Still, I was really keen... and then even my mali turned his nose up at my compost, telling me, 'Madam, cow dung is better.' I may yet abandon the whole effort!

I'm finding that the biggest challenge of gardening in India, besides the extreme weather, is finding the DIY gardening tools and information I've always taken for granted; especially ready-mixed, bagged up compost. Here, wandering gardeners called 'malis' usually handle the nitty gritty and the hard work of gardening. So I too have taken on a 'Mali Bhaiya', a very sweet easy-going guy who arrives on a bicycle with a pair of industrial strength secateurs, a machete, and his bare hands and feet. He carries sacks of earth and manure based compost to our third floor terrace as easily as a pack horse, tipping them out onto the floor and mixing them into a crumbly, dark brown tilth. He tells me what will tolerate scorching sun (bourgainvillea, desert rose, champa, oleander) and what needs humid shade... when I can plant and when I should spray... and when something has truly bitten the dust. For months, he tried to help me save a Desert Rose (Adenium Obesum) with dramatic white and cerise tipped flowers. He replanted it four times, each time hacking away at the swollen, rotting trunk. Finally, we admitted defeat and threw the gorgeous but shrivelled specimen out. Think it was the victim of too much water... another Monsoon casualty!

My next planting wishlist includes henna (yes, that henna!), a grape vine (for shade and fruit, though it may not thrive so much in a pot), and some 'winter' flowers -- marigolds, verbena, perhaps peony? I've seen loads growing up in Kashmir in summer... And I'm told spinach will grow especially fast and furious right now, so I better get those seedlings into some soil!

Meanwhile, I recently went to a 'raw food' demonstration. The chef told us that fresh vegetables have far more phyto-nutrients (plant based chemical compounds) than cooked. I'm far from convinced about the benefits of a raw-food diet -- many vegetables are actually healthier when steamed -- but I don't mind adding a few raw recipes to my repertoire. What I especially liked was his explanation of flavorful food. If you add elements of all the flavors: sweet, sour, pungent, bitter and salty to a dish or a meal, the tongue responds with glee.

So here's a quick homemade salad dressing to enjoy on the last of that summer veg if your growing season is ending... or on the first harvests of radishes and the like, if like mine, your growing season is just beginning!

In a blender, add some olive oil, half a peeled cucumber, a couple of slices of mango, some garlic powder (half tsp), mustard powder (1/4 tsp), 2 pitted dates, a dried red chili, one red onion and a little water. Adjust the ingredients to taste.

The mango and dates give it sweetness, the garlic and chili add pungency, the mustard is slightly tart... not only does this make a great dressing, we liked it so much, we thought it would work beautifully as a summer gazpacho!

YUM!

And while you prepare that raw food gazpacho, here's some food for the brain: a fascinating NYT piece on George Orwell and his obsession with growing and rearing. Happy eating!

30 August 2012

So you probably think it's effortless having a nanny/cook, right? Well, I won't lie, it is fantastic most days, especially when you're raising two toddlers and working from home. So fantastic, that like any human being, you get way too used to it and begin to take the littlest things for granted.

But effortless? No. Taking on full-time employees is -- I'm discovering -- quite hard work. Besides salaries, bonuses, overtime and punctuality, there are issues that are uniquely Indian. Language and literacy are two huge ones. Neither of my two helpers can read English, so distinguishing baking powder from baking soda (oh boy there's a big difference!), reading instructions much less recipes, and working out the dials on appliances... is all tricky at best.

Then there's the culinary culture clash.

Amongst the spices and spaghetti, lentils and leftovers, I'm discovering some fundamental differences between my incredibly globalized, middle-class habits, and those of my staff's.

One day, merrily planning out the week's meals -- with ease and speed paramount -- I was evangelizing to my nanny about our convection oven. I felt like a 1950s door-to-door saleslady: "See how quick and easy? You can roast, grill, bake, defrost at the touch of a button. Just set the timer and temperature and relax! What a happy, well-fed household you'll have with this Bakewell oven!"

In the midst of my reverie, with my nanny looking perplexed, I suddenly heard myself... and the full-blown absurdity of what of I was saying struck me like a thunderbolt. Like most Indians, this woman can barely afford enough electricity to run a refrigerator... Her cooking involves fuel calculations I've never ever even countenanced. She will soak all rice and lentils, so they take less fuel to cook. She will use a pressure cooker to shorten cooking times exponentially. And here I was advocating the use of electricity -- lots of it -- to slow cook some potatoes.

I've read about people in the developed world doing far more to destory the planet than those in 'developing' countries, and here I was hastening the trend in the spirit of 'efficiency' and 'progress'.

Other absurdities struck me in the following weeks: leftovers. I suddenly twigged why my nanny and cleaning lady would take day-old lasagne or chicken from the fridge and hold it out to me, with a look of faint disgust as they asked, "What should I do with this?"

When you don't have electricity or have it sporadically, fridges might well not exist. A 'leftover' -- that staple of the 24/7 developed world -- could kill you... slowly and painfully.

And then of course there's the conundrum of lettuce. No matter how many times I've demonstrated how to wash it and dry it... how to mix it with cold meats, olives, sweet corn, how to dress it... it always ends up at the back of the fridge, jammed behind more recognizable vegetables like beans, cauliflower and okra. There, it always ends up frost-damaged and then I have to throw it out. Occasionally, one of the women will endeavor to do something with it. And so I'll come home to find it washed, chopped and put back in the fridge. I'm sure if they had their way, it would be braised in onion, garlic, ginger, coriander and cumin and served with a nutritious, simple chappati.

Hmmmmmm.

On that note, a favorite, easy "winter" Indian recipe (anything not blazing Hades here is "winter"). This is a lovely recipe from my friend, Renu Agal, who along with her mother and sister is a vegetarian home gourmet extraordinaire!! It's a simple but delicious white radish and pomegranate salad with the bonus of looking gorgeous in a fairy-tale kind of way when you put it on the table!

Pomegranate radish salad:

1 pomegranate, seeds extricated*

2 long white radish (Daikon) grated

Squeeze of lime/lemon

Pinch of black salt

Just combine all the ingredients and season to taste. The black salt (actually it's purplish) is a very mineraly Himalayan salt that is available in lots of health food shops. It gives the dish a spicier taste. If you don't have it, just add regular salt.

* To easily extricate pomegranate seeds, cut the pomegranate in half. Hold the cut side down into the palm of your hand and then gently but firmly tap the skin side with a big spoon. That will loosen the seeds so you can get them out more easily. Another tip is to remove the red outer skin completely so that you can just shake the seeds from the white casing inside.

16 July 2012

So much to share! I'm taking a few moments out from working this week to blog. Life has been on warp speed lately with the challenge of keeping two little mites occupied, when it's 113℉ outside!

Mostly we go swimming every afternoon. (Fortunately we have access to a pool.) This week, we also have cratefuls of delicious, ripe mangoes to gorge on! India and mangos feature in some of my fondest childhood memories. I remember, age 4, I spent a year living with my cousins in Jammu. On summer weekends, the entire extended family would picnic on the grassy banks of a canal. Mangos would be tied in a mesh bag and lowered into the frigid, fast-moving water to cool them before slicing the soft, tart, treacly orange flesh. When I'm dead, I'll probably still crave the sensation of scooping out sweet, sticky mango pulp from the tough skin with my teeth!

Yum yum yum.

Yesterday, my 3-year-old, who is now addicted to 'ice lollies' (that's the British equivalent of 'popsicles')... demanded a fourth one after lunch. I've been freezing a little apple juice mixed with water for him and he just sucks and crunches them relentlessly in this heat.

Then I had a brainwave -- mix chopped up mangos with some thick cream and sugar! (Ok, not a brainwave exactly, though I felt pretty clever when I thought of it). So hey, presto, today, he's slurping down homemade mango kulfi-sicles!

Otherwise on the home front, I'm back to taking on freelance journalism assignments. Mostly, I go off to do interviews while my 3-year-old is at school between 10 and 12 every morning. The little one has only just turned 6 months and is still breast-feeding, so she has to come along. I've strapped her on and taken her into a warren of lanes in Old Delhi to interview the Love Commandos ... rocked her with my feet under the table at a coffee shop while talking to Americans living in India... or left her in the car with the nanny, a/c running full blast while I spoke to man who investigates the thousands of children going missing here every year.

It's a big juggling act. And like most working mothers, I get all kinds of reactions. Mostly, people are incredibly taken with her, and very gracious. For most Indians, children are a completely natural and pleasurable part of everyday life. Hip young men with gelled hair and earrings will go completely cuddly and gooey around a young child. Most probably already have one of their own at home, or if not, then certainly nieces and nephews. But occasionally, very occasionally, I'm reminded of how unnatural children are for some people.

Yesterday, a rather pompous young man I met at a coffee shop for a quick interview, told me curtly, "You can pick up your baby if you need to." Translation: "Why did you bring your kid with you. I'm finding her presence extremely annoying."

A couple of weeks ago, while corresponding with a new editor for some freelance work, I got this rather terse email:

"Any progress on some story ideas? **** was asking about you and saying you were dependable and professional."

My first inclination was to send back a virtual middle finger. Had the editor been standing in front of me, I think I might have given him a bloody nose. Breathe. Breathe. Ok, he doesn't know me, or my situation (which makes writing such a shitty message even more of a schmucky thing to do).

Her point about parenting not being as respected as being committed to religion, or sport is pertinent. As is the squeamishness of highlighting family commitments at work. Her comment about a work colleague asking her not to talk about her kids all the time struck a chord, as did her insistence that anyone introducing her ought to mention her two children along with her academic and professional qualifications.

My husband and I were talking about all this... and he pointed out that we've both made very conscious decisions not to have jobs where we are constantly having to choose between work and family. He's right... but it doesn't necessarily make me feel settled. I'm hyper-aware that as a journalist, my profession - while championing parent's working rights and equality in the workplace - is also one of the poorest at implementing these rights. And as a result, I'm now freelancing, rather than working full-time.

Then again, part of the problem here is our obsession with 'having it all'... and how all-encompassing that 'all' has become!

So with that, I'm off to the freezer again, for another homemade mango popsicle!

03 June 2012

As I write this, my own love child is squawking and squealing away whilst trying to bite her toy elephant. Now, happily married with two children, it's often difficult to recall the pain and desperation my husband and I were subjected to when we decided to marry, very much against both family's wishes. It was an ordeal that lasted nearly a decade and sapped most of our 20s.

Yet, as soon as I heard about India's Love Commandos, who rescue love birds and help them begin new lives together... I suddenly remembered that deep ache in my heart... lovesick, in the face of threats, emotional blackmail and sheer malice.